Last Thursday I blogged that editors who want to lead innovation undercut their efforts if they aren’t active on Twitter. I mentioned Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, and used the screenshot above (now getting its third run here). So, as I normally do when I criticize someone, I invited response from Baquet. I tweeted at him (not likely to get a response, given the topic of the blog).
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I also emailed him using the clunky contact form at the Times site. I have no faith in such forms (or in the likelihood that people will respond), so I also asked a friend who works at the times for his email address and emailed him directly. Late yesterday, Baquet responded to my email. This won’t be one of my blogs full of lessons, but here’s one: Email people politely and they often respond. In a later email after I posted his response, Baquet said he responded because “you were fair and persistent.” That combination always serves a journalist well.

Mathew Ingram, who blogged about Baquet, the Times and Twitter before I did, noted that he didn’t get a response:

I posted Baquet’s response this morning, and my blog and Twitter and Facebook streams have been busy ever since. Mathew’s responses were just two of many. By about 3 p.m. Central time, I passed my all-time single-day record of 4,882. The Baquet response had 3,881 views, more traffic in six hours than the original post has had in six days. Update: the one-day traffic on the blog beat the old record by nearly one-third. I had 6,433 views for the day, nearly 4,900 of them for the Baquet response.

I lied (but I was sincere at the time) when I said this morning that I’d let Baquet have the last word on the topic. Of course, the nature of Twitter (and digital media in general) is conversational. Neither Baquet nor I will have the last word. Someone somewhere will have the last word when a conversation that is broader than the two of us moves on to something else. Given the interest his response has generated, I’ll curate some of today’s conversation below, but first I’ll repeat Baquet’s three-paragraph response (combined from two emails):

I do think the fact that I have made so little use of Twitter is fair game for criticism. But I can’t resist an observation. One of the biggest criticisms aimed at my generation of editors is that we created a priesthood, that we decided who was a journalist and who was not. If you hadn’t done cops and courts you weren’t a journalist, etc. That characterization was right on. We deserved the hit.

As I observe the criticism nowadays, you will forgive me for noting that it sounds like a new priesthood is being created, with new rules for entry.

Don’t take that as saying I should not tweet more. I should. Just a warning that each generation of journalists seems so certain they know what it takes to be a journalist.

I encourage reading that Jarvis exchange with Bill Keller. Except that Keller’s response was long and Baquet’s short (short was better, I think, but both were good), it does have some nice similarities to my exchange with Baquet (including acknowledgment of who really gets the last word).

I encourage you to read Alex’s full response, but I particularly agree with this part:

For much of the public, a top editor publicly choosing not to participate in the hurly burly of online conversation, even to the point of not contributing, much less demonstrating listening or acting as a hub to redistribute confirmed reports, might look like he or she is remaining aloof, choosing to preach from in front of the cathedral, not minister to a circle of friends.

I have written before here about my distaste for religious metaphors in discussions of media. I’m a son of two clergy members, a brother of two more and I used to cover religion. I haven’t seen any religious metaphors for media that I consider accurate, and I know some people who would find some of them offensive. But I’ll make these points about his priesthood metaphor:

I’m two years older than Baquet is, so generation has nothing to do with it.

I never worked a cops or courts beat. I covered both at times as a general assignment reporter and I edited cops and courts coverage. And I was an assigning editor at a major regional newspaper at age 24. I’m not sure the accusation of priesthood against the old school was ever accurate. I think I was “in” somehow, but I’m not sure any one experience assured my membership.

I did not mean to imply (and don’t think I did) that use of Twitter defines whether you are a journalist, or a good journalist or an editor or a good editor. But I did say and I do believe that if you want to lead innovation on your staff, visibly not using one of digital journalism’s most important tools undercuts your leadership efforts. I don’t see that as rules for entry to a “priesthood.” But the general criticism that there are multiple paths to excellence, and that I might overvalue Twitter the way that others have over overvalued other things, is both valid and appreciated.

Baquet is right that we should be careful not to obsess too much over Twitter. It can be a distraction from work and isn’t the only or best way to drive readers to our Web sites. New media darling Buzzfeed actually receives more Web traffic from Pinterest than Twitter. I haven’t seen anyone chastising Baquet for a lack of pins.

For me, whether one tweets is a solid but imperfect litmus test of one’s embrace and interest in new media. Are you curious about ways to be better at your job? Do you experiment with the latest technologies? Then you’re probably on Twitter, and have been for a while.

Regarding McFarland’s Pinterest point, I think journalists should promote their content on Twitter, but driving traffic is way down the list of reasons I think journalists should use Twitter. I’ve blogged about using Pinterest, too, and I think that would be a good tool for Baquet and other editors to explore as well. But the second paragraph I quoted from McFarland is exactly why I think editors need to use Twitter: It says something to your staff about you (that was the point of Thursday’s post).

McFarland noted some leaders of digital news operations have been using Twitter since 2006 and 2007. And it’s not just digital news leaders. A frequent excuse people have given for Baquet not being more active on Twitter is that he’s busy (see Jay Rosen’s tweet below). But, as I noted in a Facebook discussion last week, Marty Baron, Davan Maharaj and Greg Moore also lead large newsrooms and find time to be active on Twitter.

Dean Baquet’s reply to criticisms that he doesn’t tweet. http://t.co/31ccuQo4GY (I don’t care if he does or not. He has other things to do.)

As for lurking on Twitter, that’s certainly more helpful than ignoring Twitter altogether. I take Patrick LaForge’s word (above) that Baquet lurks. But I suspect most people who “lurk” without engaging actually don’t learn much. I suspect most take a quick look occasionally (or rarely) rather than lurking regularly. Baquet’s response to the outrage over Alessandra Stanley’s embarrassing piece about Shonda Rhimes, as I mentioned in last Thursday’s post, did not indicate any understanding of Twitter or of the reaction there to Stanley’s piece. I don’t rule out that some people who don’t engage on Twitter can understand it pretty well by lurking. But I’ll insist that you’ll understand Twitter better if you engage there regularly.

And you’ll tell your staff that learning new tools and skills, and getting over your discomfort, is important.

A final note to Twitter: Fix your embed codes. When I click “embed,” it defaults to include the preview of media linked in a tweet. I click that off, because I don’t want all those previews you see above. But it doesn’t work. Fix it, please.

Update on that note to Twitter: Thanks to Mathew Ingram for emailing me directions for stripping out the redundant parent tweets from some of the embedded tweets (I left a few parent tweets in as non-redundant parts of the conversation). Now, if only I could figure out how to strip out those previews (also called “cards”) that come with links.

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[…] It might have looked like I was picking on the Times and Executive Editor Dean Baquet last year when I suggested that active use of Twitter might help him lead innovation in his newsroom. But I invited him to respond, and published his response, which drew far more traffic than my initial criticism. […]